They have books. Those books are not evidence. Those books are written by humans. Those books over no actual, independently-verifiable evidence. And anything that cannot be independently verified is only anecdote.
So because they are not verified, peer reviewed by independent non-biased individuals, then itâs faith?
So science is peer reviewed by other scientists,
Theological sources would be peer reviewed by?
Other theolgians who could verify the accuracy of the scriptures and thus call it trust.
Iâm not defending the Amarrian faith. I really donât care about it. I donât think its some sort of opiate either. What I do care about, is its use to conveniently justify slavery. And worse, the reclaiming.
Science is peer reviews by other scientists⌠by trying to disprove the results. Thatâs important. The results have to be something that can be tested. If you canât test it, then itâs meaningless conjecture, and thereâs no point investing belief into it.
How do you verify the accuracy of scriptures? How do you verify that a non-physical entity conjured all of existence out of nothing? How do you verify that the early Emperors were inspired by this non-physical entity who leaves no physical trace of their presence, and that those Emperors werenât simply competent military and administrative leaders who used personal charisma and religious dogma to keep their population unified while they used that population to expand their personal power through conquest?
How does a theologian verify the immaterial?
Very good points.
At the risk of speaking for Elsebeth (which I do not), I suspect she is not so much retreating as she is simply opting not to personally go to war with someone who adamantly refuses to learn from her errors. That whole diplomat thing, the fact that making up for the rampant inadequacies of the Amarr education system isnât her job, LUMENâs effectively a bluetral, yadda yaddaâŚ
Indeed. There are many words worth a fatal duel in the cluster, but way more situations where a duel is not an appropriate option.
And so â â â â ing WHAT?
Amarr is a Honorable and Lawful Empire, fighting and dying for the Empire is a great Honor, they represent values of Modern Civilization, Law and Order.
Itâs not like a disgrace fighting for gallentean decadence!
We may be willing to sell our products to foreign powers, but that does not mean that we depend on imports from our trade partners to stay afloat. The Megacorporations have always put a high emphasis on autarchy in the field of production and resource extraction in order to avoid such dependencies. Kaalakiota is the most well-known example of this, but the others do it too.
I canât hear you over all that hypocrisy.
You were surprised to learn that a people that sacrificed their homeworld and subjected themselves to over a century of total war to avoid integration by a foreign power, in order to preserve their culture, would be reluctant to unite and integrate with other peoples?
Co-operation resulted in roughly four out of five invaded Caldari systems falling to the invaders. The ability of CONCORD and EDENCOM to contribute to the security of our people has been grossly over-estimated. That is not a mistake that ought to be repeated.
If it is so admirable, then it would have reverse-engineered the Stellar Transmuter that was captured in the Arshat system so that we can finally begin to work on returning the 27 stolen systems to the fold, alongside undoing the bio-adaptations their inhabitants were forced to undergo.
And if the Arshat transmuter had been reverse-engineered to give the four major powers the tools to undo itâs effects, in order to return the systems to their normal state, those offensives might even have a point. As it stands they have no identifiable objective and continue to be a morbid waste of manpower and materiel. The closest thing -we- have had to an objective since the invasions ceased was the destruction of all infrastructure belonging to traitor capsuleers. To my knowledge we have simply run out of viable targets to strike. This is something which I have pointed out before, only to be accused of âextremely limited strategic thinkingâ. I donât know who decided that chucking squadron after squadron through a wormhole without a plan was a suitable way to continue the war but if that is what strategic brilliance looks like I will wear the insult with pride.
They will not be able to hide from us forever. The conflict will be resolved when the last Triglavian holdouts have been glassed into oblivion.
Not a doctrine I ever saw whilst I served three years as an ADC to a WC in the CN. I do not know why they refitted those ships, or why they ignored my constant pleas to phase out all launcher hulls with the conventional turret hulls, but the only force that was adequately employing anything resembling CN doctrines was EDI, and it took a long time before all doctrines within it were phased out in favour of Nagas, Feroxes and Ospreys.
Sure, but that doesnât mean that conspiracy theories (which is what I was demonstrating an example of) wonât paint the Amarr as having that intention. I donât think itâs any real stretch to say that the Amarr understand the Caldari about as poorly as they understand any other isolationist group that wants them to stay the hell out of their business.
Did it? Because one of the big points being made is that there wasnât meaningful cooperation. The assets defending the State⌠were State assets, chosen by the State for that job.
Trusting Caldari officers to run Caldari fleets full of Caldari ships to defend the State? I think the problem really lies more in the refusal of the Caldari assets in question to adapt to the particulars of the engagement. I mean, I watched whole formations of Blackbirds jam one Leshak in a fleet, more than once. That made every last one of them useless, because the ship being jammed⌠could still target all of them, just like the ones not being jammed.
EDENCOM certainly wasnât captaining those vessels. They werenât leading those fleets. Those were Caldari officers, using Caldari technology fitted to Caldari ships⌠in basically the worst way possible.
And you were privy to the loadouts of every third- and fourth-string garrison force in the State?
So the Osprey Navy Issue isnât used in a Caldari Navy doctrine? Huh. Makes you wonder why the Navyâd slather its name all over themâŚ
Eh, artillery using Titanium Sabot more closely matches the resist holes on Trig ships. EDI shouldâve ditched the Caldari hulls entirely in favor of arty boats. Also, Basilisks, please. Ospreys⌠ugh.
How do you know they havenât? Because they havenât told us? Itâs CONCORD. They donât tell us anything if they donât have to. At this point, I wouldnât be at all surprised to find out the only thing keeping them from calling for a full-scale reconquista is that they canât get the gates working again.
Or to keep fickle and capricious capsuleers from screwing it up until itâs ready.
Thing is that people who arenât expected to travel abroad generally never learn about other peopleâs cultures. For example, I learned the language most commonly spoken in each of the CONCORD signatories, but when I entered Imperial space for the first time, the only context I was given was that a Holder was like a hereditary executive. Consequently it does not surprise me at all to learn that a lot of people who might never meet someone from another culture might assume that their culture is universal. And then, when they suddenly end up being Capsuleers and connecting to the Summit, this results in culture shock.
It didnât look like a CN formation, it didnât act like a CN formation, so my personal guess at this point is that EC just asked for something that sounded right, and they were given those exact things to the letter under the assumption that they knew what they were doing.
Orders are orders. Apparently also when they come from an EDENCOM officer who does not know what electronic countermeasures are. Under normal circumstances, once the strengths and weaknesses of an enemy formation become known, this is communicated up the chain and the next wave to go into the grinder will be hard countering the enemy. The fact that this did not occur during the invasions is one off the warning signs that tells me that something abnormal was happening.
Iâm a bit of a gossip girl, but not to the extent that I would discuss the loadouts of actively serving formations, or any other specifics. What I can say is that what I saw during the invasions was abnormal to the extreme, and had anything resembling that occurred during regular CN deployments the person responsible would take the tea.
Not saying it isnât, Iâm saying that my personal recommendation based on what I was seeing was to bring in the turret boats, fix the resist holes, and put whoever was coordinating the jams in front of a firing squad.
Unfortunately no other Attack Battlecruiser was able to throw as much pain down range at the distances we needed them to operate at in order to supercede the Naga. People who could fly a Basilisk were welcome to bring one, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of the bodies in fleet were new capsuleers, industrialists and haulers who suddenly got forced to defend their homes. Consequently the entry level was meta-fitted tech 1 cruisers, simply because that was what they could get into in a reasonable timeframe.
I am acting under the assumption that they are people of moderate intelligence who want the four empires to contribute when the time comes. So if they want us to fleet up theyâre gonna have to at least let us know that itâs go time.
Firstly, co-operation requires the pros to outweigh the cons. Right now EDENCOMâs stance seems to be âSorry about those sixteen systems. We have no idea how to get them back. Give us money.â That is not going to get them far. Secondly, binding decisions on the inter-national level are made by the Chief Executive Panel and I highly doubt that they listen to either Suzaku-haan or myself.
I was there.
Even under EDENCOM combined operations did not take place. Iâd have preferred it if the regular chain of command was intact.
The outcome of the war.
Iâve seen enough Caldari assets wasted in EDENCOM hands to think otherwise.
It is a cost versus benefit analysis. In the case of a militia capsuleer, that is someone able to take and hold a system with nothing but crewless frigates. Conversely, in the case of EDENCOM formations being sent into Pochven, those are baseliner ships crewed by people with families, being sent somewhere where they can in no way undo the damage the original Triglavian invasions inflicted upon the cluster. More casualties, less results.
On the contrary, my leaders have openly voiced their displeasure over EDENCOMâs performance, and for me the continued operations in Pochven are a prime example of why they are right.
That is not how my familyâs name is written.
My current guess is that this is due to external political pressure.
Reasoning is great, but one should occasionally look at the results.
The Collective is based in those systems and will be able to salvage all wrecks and collect all escape pods after the engagements. They will also be able to throw in ships of any weight class whilst our forces are constrained by the nature of the wormhole they use to affect entry.
For -this- long?
They could just run in weapons and supplies with a Crane and itâd help them more than new wrecks in orbit.
I do not believe that the constant casualties affect the forces seconded to EDENCOM in a positive way.
Peace talks in any form would be betraying the people who sacrificed their lives to protect our homes. What ought to happen is collecting our strength, not expending it, and waiting until we have a way to push in there, stay there, and retake the systems.
Yes, that is why they are in charge. No one went into this discussion under the assumption that their statements would make any difference.
I trust Chairman Saraki-haan to do what is right for the Caldari people.
The Empire seems to be following too. Did you not pull all regular troops from EDENCOM, after all? Seconded reserves instead?
I would like to quickly point out that we do see the carnage of battle and ânew wrecks in orbitâ, while any claims concerning âdata collectionâ or any other subtle purpose to EDENCOM ops are purely speculative.
That is not to say there isnât a greater game being played, but it is one thing to give an ally the benefit of the doubt and another to invent possibilities to shut down criticism. There must be an investigation.
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I do not see how this is a point of debate at all. I donât think anyone in this thread has demanded the complete dismantlement of EDENCOM as an institution just yet. All that was requested was that a thorough investigation be conducted on the current and historic allocation of funding and the impartiality of its leadership.
The fact that this is seen as something unreasonable, in light of everything, is nothing if not a little suspect on its own.
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When I said
âI was thereâ,
I did not mean it as in
âI fought for EDENCOM and you should take my word for itâ.
What I meant was
âI was on grid with the EDENCOM units defending Caldari systems and the way I saw them operate differs in extremis from the way Caldari Navy formations operated during my time in the Caldari Navyâ.
Firstly, It would be an innocuous typing mistake if it happened once. After two years of my family name being miss-spelled by a multitude of people, I figured that it was prudent to rectify the matter.
Secondly, I do not see a reason to use more words than necessary. I believe that the Caldari Navy would have handled the defence better without EDENCOM interference, because of what I saw those units do under EDENCOM guidance.
I do not appreciate my compatriots being thrown into a pointless meatgrinder for a couple of years, without having managed to re-take a single system in Pochven.
That is what EDENCOM has been doing since all of this began.
That is why we began deploying Corporate Security Forces to defend our systems instead.
One âneutralâ Capsuleer with a covert ops cloak is literally all it takes to run guns from one place to another without being seen. That statement holds as true for highsec as it does for any other place.
Not as flippant as the continued demands for funding and manpower, contrasted to the lack of clarification about current operational goals and the absence of results.
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So you believe the State wasted time and resources refitting ships to a specification that would have driven a CN officer to ritual suicide, using weapons and loadouts the crews would not be trained on, and so redoubling the likelihood of failure⌠all without raising that issue.
You also believe that that is a simpler assumption than 'these were massively outdated assets that might have been previously tasked with guarding so-called âKhaldariâ assets in Khanid space, and the Megas took the opportunity to rid themselves of obsolete, disposable trash?
I sort of have to point that that kind of mismanagement also doesnât sound terribly Caldari⌠and that even if youâre right, the failure of upper-echelon CN officers to raise their concerns about the performance of such refitted vessels, and the almost built-in pointless loss of Caldari Navy crew and officers attempting to use systems they were not trained on, should be driving large numbers of those upper-echelon officers to the tea, anyway.
And, again, youâre familiar with every loadout the Navy uses in all areas of space?
Iâm not asking for State secrets, Iâm not asking you to list them⌠we already know what these ships had. Iâm asking you if you are willing to swear that you are personally familiar with every single composition and loadout the entire Caldari Navy uses in every role and arena.
For comparison: In close to a decade as the fitting director of Goonswarm, I wasnât familiar with every loadout Goonswarm used in every role and every region. A number of special-operations SIGs use their own, non-standard configurations. For example: Miniluv. Other groups like Whelp Squad also use their own internal doctrines. And GSF is orders of magnitude smaller than the Caldari Navy, with no-where near the variety or complexity of roles needing to be filled.
For the record, I have flown against Caldari Navy forces in the past, and not only on my own. The proclivity of Caldari Navy Blackbirds and Griffins to jam a single target en masse out of a group is well-established, with successive waves of Navy forces consistently failing to adapt their EWAR options in any way toward countering their opponents.
Well, except for how youâre insisting that the missile ships used were not any doctrine youâve ever seen in 3 whole years.
We are not the empires. CONCORD can, and does communicate with the empires without ever telling us anything.
Right now EDENCOMâs stance seems to be âWe are doing what the Inner Circle, comprised of representatives from all four empires including the State, are telling us to do.â Surely, if EDENCOM were in some way acting out against the interests of the Stateâs representative, that representative is in a position to raise hell over the issue, no? Considering any 1 of the 5 can bring things to a crashing halt on literally every issue before CONCORD?
Does not, in fact, prove that the State would have performed better on its own. The State has actually shown no such improved performance. Nor has the State produced any plan of their own to retake the lost systems⌠or even access them in significant numbers.
Well, if we take your construction of things, youâve seen purpose-built ships sent by the State over to EDENCOM in configurations that do not play to their strengths, with crews who would have had no time to learn the new systems, and yet the State personnel donât seem to have raised any objections.
Nor have any actual current Caldari Navy officers raised any issues or made any public statements to the effect of âif youâd let us use our doctrines, it wouldâve been fine!â Which, yâknow, I think theyâd likely do⌠especially since the Fed didnât seem to have much issue, and they donât even have any real EWAR options. Pointing a ship that isnât running away is useless.
Shame none of the Navy brass thought to be concerned about those baseliners and their families when they sent half-trained crews to EDENCOM without any objection, huh?
I think it was an EDENCOM decision.
That is not a thing.
I can not speak about this and you should not speak about such things related to entities you supported either.
Nonsense that would be silly.
I have indeed not seen them use torpedoes or cruise missiles against AB-fit Frigates or Destroyers during my three years in the navy, because it would be an ineffective waste of munitions.
Yes.
And yet, it is a thing in the vernacular of many Caldari living and working in facilities in Khanid spaceâincluding a number of Caldari capsuleers with ties to the Empire. Acknowledging that the terminology is not in any way officially recognized is why it was put in single-quotes.
Right. So EDENCOM insisted that the State, alone among the Signatories, needed to refit their ships in ways the ships themselves were ill-suited for, and into conditions their crews were not trained to operate. They insisted upon this time-consuming measure despite the EDENCOM muster needing the get organized and operational absolutely ASAP? And the State made no objections to this?
Gotta say, those last two assertions really donât establish a picture of even minimal competence on the part of the Caldari Navyâs upper echelon officer corps. So, congratulations on your assertion that the Caldari Navy is too incompetent to even recognize a colossal point of failure in the defense of the State, and raise alarms about it before the failure actually occurs.
Or, for that matter, even competent enough to decide to reinforce the endangered systems with their own doctrinaire forces after the point of failureâs been exposed, in an attempt to shore up defenses. But hey, EDENCOMâs got it, right?
I mean, I could see being surprised the first time, confident EDENCOM will of course recover and adapt the second⌠but the third? The fourth? The ninth time it happens? Once it was obvious that whoever was at fault, EDENCOMâs forces clearly couldnât do the job on their own?
To just sit back and do nothing to protect the State? Deflect the blame for the doctrines all you like, the Caldari Navy still sat on their asses and let it happen.
Iâll speak about any damned thing I want. No doctrineâs specifics remain secret past the first time ships are lost, and we all know it. If there are doctrines that have not suffered losses, and so remain completely OPSEC, then I am more than capable of preserving that without ever letting you or anyone else know that I am doing so, or that such doctrines exist. Moreover, Iâm capable of doing it without issuing blanket denials of the existence of those doctrines.
And yet, itâs happened. And continues to happen. Ask anyone who regularly runs security missions for the Fed.
As long as this detail is clear to all observers.
The EDENCOM formations were replaced with CSF formations, commanded by CSF officers, and the losses stopped, but I agree that this decision could and should have been taken sooner.
Unfortunately not everyone is immune to litigation. I refuse to discuss anything I saw during my time in the navy in detail on a public board. What I can say without crossing details is that what I saw EDENCOM units in Caldari systems do was not representative for the normal performance of that service branch.
You mean when the active phase of the invasion ended?
Nobodyâs claiming itâs a typical doctrine. Iâm simply saying that unless you are claiming to be directly familiar with all doctrine loadouts used by every single part of the Caldari Navy under all circumstances and for all missions, you cannot authoritatively state that those shipsâand only the State-provided shipsâwere refitted to non-doctrinaire specifications.